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As the title already says, this blog post will describe how the MOD Team validates modifications and what happens to them before they come out at the other end of the queue.

Enter the queue

The validation queue is a page that lists all modifications ordered by date of submissions ascending. We have a few statuses that a modification can have, which will be explained shortly. To give you an idea of how it looks like, see this screenshot.

As you can see we have quite a few options here. In order of listing, the buttons are “Overview”, “Validate”, “Manage”, “Discuss”.

MOD status

When a modification is first submitted to the queue it is marked as “new”. This means it has not been looked at yet. During this phase the author can submit an update. Shortly after a junior validator runs MPV on it (yes, we have an MPV button), and checks for critical errors. If there’s something really bad we may InstaDeny™ it.

If a validator has started looking through the code the modification gets labeled as “validating”. It stays at this until it has been completely validated.

After this the status “testing” is assigned. At this stage a junior validator will go ahead and test the hell out of the modification to make sure everything is working as it should. He reports back to the validation topic how it went.

If a minor error is found a validator may change the status to “repack”. In this case the modification will be repacked and tested again.

Once the testing has been completed, depending on the verdict the modification will get labeled either as “approve” or “deny”. The validation leader will at some point clear out the whole batch of approve/deny modifications.

For some special occasions we have an “attention” status that is used whenever there is a decision on a specific case pending.

After a modification has been approved, a new topic is posted by the MOD Robot and the modification shows up in the MODDB.

Flowchart

DavidIQ has come up with a nice flowchart which describes the validation process.